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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Zarrock God of Evil" data-source="post: 270686" data-attributes="member: 2025">I've copied the text from my site for ease of reference. I've got a Specific Critical Hit System tagged on to this as well that I'll post in case anyone's interested.The Severity Points rule is inspired by the optional rule Ryan Dancey presented long ago on Erich Noah's 3E News Site, were he tried to integrate the popular Vitality/Wound point system to DnD. At the bottom you'll find rules variants for this particular rule that should make it easier for you to adapt it to your own campaign.No matter how physically powerful you are or skilled in the art of combat, there are wounds you just cannot shrug off easily. Even the hardiest of veterans can be brought down by one unfortunate injury. To represent this any creature has a number of severity points equal to his or her constitution score. If this total ever reaches zero the creature or character dies - no matter how many hit points he still has left. There are many different ways to lose severity points and they include all of the following:Failing a fortitude save Being subjected to a critical hit Losing a point of constitution - no matter if the loss is temporary or permanent. A severity point lost in this manner returns when the constitution loss is restored. Being subjected to a sneak attack or similar (such as the Duelist's precise strike) Losing hit points while disabled in any way - including unconscious, stunned, and paralysed. Being clobbered. (see Variant Rule: Clobbered in the DMG) Being subjected to Massive Damage (see Variant Rule: Death from Massive Damage in the DMG) Creatures that don't have a constitution score, do not have any severity points. Severity points do not heal naturally before the character has regained all his hit points after which they heal at the same rate as hit points. Cure spells heal a number of SP equal to their level (and viceversa in the case of inflict wounds spells) but need to be designated specifically at healing (or harming) a character or creature's SPs. Optional Rule I: Tag-on Severity PointsWhen your hit point total is reduced to zero, you start to take damage directly to your severity point total. When you reach zero severity points use the standard rules that normally apply to a character who reaches 0 hit points. Likewise, the character doesn't die before he reaches -10 severity points - use the normal rules for having negative hit points. Subdual damage doesn't affect severity points and effects characters as decribed in the PHB and DMG.Optional Rule II: Fatigue from Severe InjuryYou suffer a penalty to all rolls - including skill checks, saves and attack rolls - equal to the number of Severity Points lost. If you have lost 2 severity points, you suffer a -2 penalty to all rolls. Needless to say characters who are reduced to few severity points are not in any condition to win battles or perform tasks of extreme difficulty. Optional Rule III: More Severity PointsIn addition to the severity points gained from your constitution score, you also gain an extra number of severity points equal to your base HD. Creatures with less than 1 HD use the HD of the class taken at first level as base HD. This optional rule makes the system less deadly and would be recommended in combat heavy campaigns.Optional Rule IV: Severity Points and the Toughness feat.Using this optional rule, every time a character chooses the Toughness feat he gains 1 extra severity point. Some DM's might choose to include the Endurance feat as well.Optional Rule V: Varying levels of SeverityUse this rule to distinguish between the level of severity that certain injuries inflict. Whenever a character would normally lose one severity point check the list below to see how many points he'll really lose:Failing a fortitude save - lose 2 severity points Being subjected to a critical hit - lose 3 severity points Losing a point of constitution - no matter if the loss is temporary or permanent. A severity point lost in this manner returns when the constitution loss is restored. Being subjected to a sneak attack or similar (such as the Duelist's precise strike) - lose 1 severity point Losing hit points while disabled in any way - including unconscious, stunned, and paralysed - lose 1 severity point Being clobbered. (see Variant Rule: Clobbered in the DMG) - lose 1 severity point Being subjected to Massive Damage (see Variant Rule: Death from Massive Damage in the DMG) - lose 3 severity points Individual DM's should feel free to change this scaling in any way that fits their taste.Optional Rule VI: Shrug-off and Dodge Variant.Whenever the character would normally lose a severity point, allow them a fortitude or reflex save (whichever is better) against DC 10 + the number of hit points lost in the round the severity takes effect. If the save is succesful the character doesn't lose a severity point. This should serve to make the game significantly less deadly. --------------------------------------------------------------------------------Optional Rule VII: Reflex SeveritiesUnder the current system, you could never suffer a severity from spells that require a reflex save (such as fireball) because it doesn't require a fortitude save. Alternatively, you can rule that losing hit points as the result of failing a reflex save causes you to lose a severity point just as if you had missed a fortitude check. This takes care of the problem and doesn't add to the complexity of the game rules.--------------------------------------------------------------------------------An example of the system using Optional rule I and II:A 2nd Level fighter with a constitution of 16 has 13 hit points and 16 Severity points. He can take a total of 29 points of damage before he starts dying. In the first round of combat the fighter suffers a critical hit inflicting 12 points of damage to the character. The figher loses 1 SP because of the crit and now has 1 hit point and 15 SP left. In the second round all the fighters rolls suffer a -1 penalty. The fighter fails a fortitude save against a poisoned arrow (affecting another ability score than con in this example) and takes 5 damage from the arrow. The missed fortitude save lowers the fighters SP total to 14. The fighter hp pool is depleted and he takes the remaining 4 points of damage to directly to his SP total bringing them further down to 10. From this point onwards all damage suffered goes directly to the fighteres SP total - but he no longer loses SP points through any other means. Any attack dealing more than 10 hp of damage will know bring the character on negative hp...I think this variant is good because it makes low level characters a bit more endurant while making death an ever present danger even for high-level characters with tons of hp.</blockquote>

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